At times of disruption and struggle, people easily get cranky toward leaders, testy with one another, and suspicious about others. Such reactions are never helpful. We will find another way, one that’s more open, curious, and inclusive. A sermon on Numbers 11.4-6, 10-16, 24-29 and Mark 9.38-40. Davis Community Church, Davis, California. September 26, 2021

Cranky, grouchy, grumpy.

Words that describe an inner state of displeasure with our circumstances. They describe the dissonance between what we want and what is. They point to a discrepancy between our expectations or desires and the experience of life we’re now living.

It’s quite normal to feel these things—to feel cranky, grouchy, and grumpy—from time to time. There’s no way life can deliver to us exactly what we want. There’s no way we can always have the power, the knowledge, the skill or money to achieve what we want.

Into the gap between our hopes and wants and needs and the reality we experience, rises the inner contradiction—the feelings of displeasure, the dissonance, the discord—we describe with words like cranky, grouchy, grumpy.

I doubt any of us got through the week without feeling cranky, grouchy, or grumpy to some degree at some point.

What irritated you this week?

Masks? Someone who treated you disrespectfully? Couldn’t find a tool or a document or an email you needed? Traffic? The news? Something you were looking forward to got cancelled? Covid and this long season of one annoyance after another?

These days I find it hard not to feel cranky more often than at other times in the past. Of course there have been times in my life when very little seemed to be going right and for a season, crankiness kind of burrowed into my being for awhile. I’d imagine that’s true for you too. But these days are filled with so many forces beyond our control—so much change, so much struggle—that it takes real spiritual poise not to become sour, frustrated, and, therefore, cranky chronically.

And isn’t it interesting, and unfortunate, how crankiness is contagious?

It takes real spiritual muscle to fend off the frustration of others, the sourness of others, the grumpiness of others. Remember Winnie the Pooh’s friend, Eeyore? The grey stuffed animal donkey who wanders around the Hundred Acre Wood with a rain cloud above his head. It can be bright and sunny. So much right with the world, but Eeyore only sees what’s wrong with the world and exaggerates it, and it’s not long until even Tigger’s bouncy-bouncy-bounciness is subdued by Eeyore’s crankiness.

There are plenty of good reasons to get cranky, grumpy, and grouchy—especially these days. Those feelings are signs that things aren’t as they could be or should be. They’re signs that we feel unable to do what we want to do to bridge the gap between what we want or need, what could be or should be, and what actually is.

Noticing that gap, and using it to stir us to some kind of meaningful action is useful, but when crankiness becomes chronic we’re in trouble. Getting stuck in what I often call the Eeyore Syndrome isn’t going to help anyone.

The stories we’ve read this morning from the Bible show us that the Eeyore Syndrome is universal and timeless.

The first story, taken from the Old Testament book of Numbers, is about a people on a journey from one place to another—out of captivity and into freedom. The Hebrews are escaping the tyranny of Pharaoh in Egypt. They are being delivered from bondage and to a new land. It’s a story that shows us the journey we’re all invited to take from time to time, individually and as a human race—the journey away from anything and everything that holds us down or holds us back, anything that dehumanizes us and everything that exploits the Earth—a journey into a new experience of life, a new place, a new way of being, a new world.

But that journey is fraught with peril, not only the perils that come at us from the outside, the dangers and challenges, but the perils that plague us from within.

In the Book of Numbers we’re told that “the rabble among them had a strong craving.” There’s this group of discontents who remember the way things were and they want to go back. Their craving for what was leads them to crankiness over what is. It starts with just one or two of them mumbling under their breath. But pretty soon their crankiness becomes contagious. And a whole bunch of the Hebrews are infected. They’re grumbling and complaining about a circumstance that isn’t going to change one bit because of their crankiness. They grumble about the food. They grumble about their leaders. They don’t know where they’re going, but they think they know the way back.

Moses, their leader, has to have a talk with God. He’s grumbling too. “Why did you make me a leader over this rabble rousing lot of grumblers? I didn’t choose this job, you gave it to me and here I am trying to do my best and my best isn’t good enough.”

You see, don’t you, the way crankiness is contagious? The Eeyore syndrome means that the raincloud doesn’t just hover over Eeyore, it spreads like great thunderclouds over us all.

“Here’s what I’m going to do for you, Moses. I’m going to spread out my Spirit among the people. I’ll give some of my Spirit to each of seventy of your old, wise people—the elders. I will inspire them to speak what’s good and true. They will counteract the infection. They will immunize the community from the calamity of this crankiness.”

God does this. But to show how far this crankiness has gone, and how hard it can be for people to step out from under the rainclouds of negativity, the story tells us that two people, Eldad and Medad, full of the Spirit, decide to go far and wide among the people and counteract the infection of irritability. But Joshua, Moses assistant, not yet freed from the Eeyore Syndrome, wants to stop them.

Moses says, “Are you serious? Let them go, we need all the help we can get.”

In times like these, we need all the help we can get. For it’s so easy to fall under the influence of negativity, pessimism, and crankiness.

Our second story is like this one. It’s taken from a text written hundreds of years later. Jesus has been casting out demons, liberating people from personal bondage. His disciples come to him and say, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t one of us.”

Jesus says, “Are you serious? Let him liberate people. For that is what we’re all about. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Now that is optimism. That is the antithesis of irritability. That is the contradiction of the infection of crankiness.

We’re living at a time when it’s terribly easy to fill the gap between what we want and need, what could be and should be, with crankiness, grumpiness, and grouchiness. It’s terribly easy to become disillusioned with just about everything and everyone. It’s terribly easy to become part of the “rabble” in the camp and want to go backward to what we knew because we can’t see where we’re going. It’s terribly alluring to participate in negativity, the infection of irritability—at home, in your neighborhood, at school, at work, at church. But when we do, the infection only spreads, the heavy rainclouds sprawl across the sky, and the Eeyore Syndrome spreads. And even the Tiggers among us, get gloomy.

It’s important for me to acknowledge that while many of us can choose optimism, gratitude, and to possess a more generous spirit, clinical depression and anxiety can trap some of us inside a world we have a hard time escaping. I have personal experience with this.

Depression is real; it is debilitating; when you’re clinically depressed you can’t just choose to feel better. Rarely can you pull yourself out from under the rainclouds. There can be healing for depression, but just telling you not to be Eeyore can only add to the shame and pain. I’m not asking you to do what is beyond you right now.

I am talking to others among us who can and need to—for our own sake, for yours, and for our world. Both Moses and Jesus tell us not to repress those who can choose to be more optimistic; we can offer a contagiousness the world needs. And that contagion of creativity can save us.

I want to end with some wisdom from the character common to many of our minds and hearts—Winnie the Pooh.

I end with his words not because I think they’re cute, but because I think they’re wise and put so memorably, so simply that it just might stir up enough of us to counteract the crankiness of our age.

When you get cranky, when you feel like Eeyore, remember the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh:

On seeing beauty when others see ugliness:

“Weeds are flowers, too,” said Pooh, “once you get to know them.”

On slowing down:

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

On not criticizing yourself or others:

“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.”

On the gift of today no matter what it may bring:

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day,” said Pooh.”

On having compassion for others:

“If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

On practicing gratitude:

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

On the fact that everyone can change:

“It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.

"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”